A gas fired infrared heater is often used as a high intensity overhead space heater for a work area, and is sometimes equipped with a refractive quartz lens as a means of imaging the heat in more intensified form on the area to be irradiated. The lens transmits perhaps only 40% of the heat directed at it, however, and can be subjected to only limited levels of heat before it will self-destruct because of the absorption rate of the lens itself and/or inability of the lens to dissipate the absorbed heat.